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Chicken Cream Soup

A soup of chicken, corned ham, onion, rice, and milk thickened with flour, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chicken Cream Soup

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Place the chicken, corned ham, and onion in a soup kettle with cold water.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer until the liquid reduces by one-third and the meat falls off the bones.

  3. Add the rice and season with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  4. Cook slowly until the rice is tender, then remove the chicken.

  5. Stir in the milk thickened with a little flour.

Finish with chicken

  1. Optionally, fry the chicken in butter and make gravy, reserving some white meat to chop and add to the soup.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Gives the broth its body and savory flavor as it simmers down.
Rice
Swells as it cooks, adding body and thickening the soup.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and mellows its seasoning.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and creamy rather than thin.
Corned ham
Adds salty, smoky meat flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; it should be mixed into the milk first so it disperses evenly and thickens the soup smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, onion, rice, pepper, milk, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, onion, rice, pepper, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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